Wednesday, December 10, 2008

1970's Flashback: Cancelled Comic Cavalcade

Cancelled Comic Cavalcade was published in-house by DC Comics (in very limited quantity) following the infamous "DC Implosion" in 1978. The two issues that were produced feature new material that was originally intended for series that were abruptly cancelled. Because of its scarcity and its significance to the history of DC Comics, original copies are highly sought after by collectors, and it has been widely bootlegged.

In 1978, in response to inflation, DC increased cover prices from 35 cents to 50 cents, but the publisher also substantially increased the number of story pages in each issue. This was promoted — along with the launch of many new series — as the "DC Explosion". However, Warner Publishing (which had purchased DC two years earlier) responded to the resulting poor sales figures (which were worsened in part by bad weather and shipping delays from the previous winter) by instructing DC to immediately cut their output to only twenty titles of 32 pages each, priced at 40 cents. Industry pundits immediately dubbed this the "DC Implosion".

The abrupt cancellation of so many titles left a substantial amount of finished and incomplete material that would not be published. Ostensibly to secure the company's copyright in the material, internal DC staff members "published" some of these stories along with other inventoried stories in two volumes on the office photocopier. A total of 35 copies of each volume were produced, and distributed to the creators of the material, to the U.S. copyright office, and to Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide as proof of their existence. The title is in homage to DCs 1940s anthology series Comic Cavalcade. Although color covers were created, the interior pages (having been reproduced on a photocopier in the days prior to widespread use of color photocopy technology) were black and white. The first issue carried a cover price of only 10 cents and the second carried a cover price of $1, but this was in jest, as the books were never actually "sold".

How it all began ....

In 1933, publishers at Eastern Color Press, intent to make better use of their printing equipment (which frequently sat idle between jobs), came up with the idea of printing an 8-page comic section that could be folded down from the large broadsheet to a smaller 9-inch by 12-inch format. The result was the first modern comic book. Containing reprints of newspaper comic strips, this experimental comic book titled "Funnies On Parade" was given away for free. It proved so popular that the following year Eastern published "Famous Funnies" and took the bold step of selling the comic for ten cents through chain stores. The enterprise was a smashing success and Eastern began churning out numerous reprints on a monthly basis. Other publishers, eager to get in on the profits, jumped on the bandwagon and the comic book industry was born!